


Third, healing the wounds

by Kyfer



Series: First, do no harm [3]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Friends to Lovers, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-29
Updated: 2020-01-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:13:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22457773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kyfer/pseuds/Kyfer
Summary: Liz Kifer is back and she has lived through the events of Infinity War and Endgame (with some adjustments).  But things can't go back to the way they were, and it's a bigger universe than it used to be, both inside and out...
Relationships: OFC/James "Bucky" Barnes;
Series: First, do no harm [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/801807
Kudos: 7





	Third, healing the wounds

**Author's Note:**

> Liz is back again! So, I had certain problems with Endgame, particularly with what Steve did, but I realized that using it would give me a way to try some things out with Liz that I couldn't see a clear way to do. So imagine that Liz was blipped away in Infinity War, came back in Endgame with all the rest, but Steve still went back in time to Peggy in spite of her, and we open right after he has disappeared again after giving his shield to Sam. Yikes. Emotional stuff now, but lots of fun to come later, as you see from the tags.
> 
> Oh, and Clint and Natasha broke the Soul stone's hold by jumping at the same time (double sacrifice, never happened before), so she isn't dead. Says me.
> 
> It'll make more sense if you've read the earlier installments of "First do no harm". I'll get back to the second part eventually too. Glad to be back!

The sun is setting. I sit in the long grass looking out at the flat, gray surface of the water, and the soft ground has seeped chilly dampness through my pants, but I don’t pay any attention. The bench is behind me, but I don’t want to sit there. Not where he sat.

_He left. In the end, he left. He left. He left._

I don’t seem to be able to think of anything else, just a dull drumbeat running through my brain, over and over. _He left. He left. He left._

After Steve disappeared again, the others tried for a long time to get me to speak, to say anything, to come inside. _He left. He left._ I didn’t move or respond to them, and so one by one they decided to let me alone and went away, back inside the building, exhausted by the end of the struggle, preoccupied with their own thoughts, their own losses.

I don’t dare move on from this simple phrase because I know that adding even a single word to it will be too terrible, will open up so much blackness that I’ll never come out of it again. _He left. He left. He left. He left. He left_

**_Me._ **

Footsteps rustle the reeds and I turn to see Bucky walking towards me, both hands in his pockets. He sits down next to me, heedless of the wet. I catch a flash of the pale eyes as he looks sideways at me. I take a deep shuddering breath.

“Did he tell you? What he was going to do?”

“He didn’t have to tell me.” His voice sounds as drained as I feel, low, but distinct. “Ever since he went back and saw her again the way she used to be he was thinkin’ about it. If he survived and ever got the chance…”

“How-“ My voice is shaking and my anger at myself makes me feel a flash of life for a moment. “How could he do that to you? How could he do it to me?”

Bucky keeps talking steadily, as if the words have just been piled up and waiting to flow out of him. “Liz, you have to remember, we were dead. To him, for five years, we were dead. He spent all that time, he grieved, he came to terms with it. Then we were back, but all that crap was hittin’ the fan, there wasn’t any time.” I shake my head and he takes one of my hands in both of his, his head bent low and his long hair partly hiding his face. “It wasn’t just Peggy either, it was his whole life, the one he missed out on. With all this complicated shit here and that to look forward to, who could blame him? Steve hasn’t changed.”

I let out a breath that I feel like I have been holding for hours, because as unlike Steve as Bucky is, I know he is telling the truth the way Steve does. I look down at our hands, his silver metal fingers entwined with mine. The metal is surprisingly warm. “Would you have done it?” I ask him suddenly. “If you could? Would you go back?”

“No,” he says immediately. “Not just because I didn’t have somebody like Steve did. Everything about me is different. You gotta…just try to go forward, not back. You showed me that.” 

He lifts his head and looks directly in my eyes for the first time, his hair flipping back. And I see that even though his face isn’t red, even though his voice is perfectly steady and clear, even though his words are so wise, some time earlier today he has cried so much that his eyes are swollen, with deep circles beneath. The sight of this causes my own tears to pour out uncontrollably, all at once. I am gasping, my mouth opens but I can’t seem to make a sound come out. I’m going to choke or explode; I can’t stand it.

Bucky puts an arm around me and with his other hand grasps one of my clenched fists and pushes it against his own chest. “Here,” he says, as if he is giving me something. I half heartedly bat the fist against him, but when I do a small despairing sound comes out of me and I feel the pressure ease the tiniest bit. Bucky clasps my chin in his hand and makes me look at him. “Again,” he states very deliberately. It all comes back to me in a rush, as Bucky knew it would; the last day he said that to me, the day he saved all the people on the battlefield, the day he proved himself, the day Steve asked me to marry him. The marriage that never got to take place – I look at my hand and the ring is still there, on my right hand as I superstitiously wanted the wedding to take place before I put it on my left. <i>Steve left in such a hurry that he never even took the ring off of his own hand, though the one he was wearing when he came back was different…<i>

An animal cry wrenches out of me. I rain down blows on Bucky’s chest and arm with both my fists, sobbing, trying to speak broken words, asking him why over and over. He absorbs it all quietly, keeping his arms loosely ringed around me. In a while, the desperation starts to drain away, and at last, I finally collapse against his chest, exhausted. Only then does he gently draw me closer and sighs. “I got you. I got you. You aren’t alone. It ain’t much, but it’s something.”

“You aren’t alone either,” I try to say, but I’m muffled against his chest and by mucus, so I sound like a six year old child with a cold. He can’t help letting out a little snigger and I try to smile, imagining how I must look, streaming with tears, hair sticking up, large wet spots on my pants from the ground. “Fine. Bake fun ob me.”

He stands, drawing me up with him. “Nah, not me. Let’s go get cleaned up.”

“Ok, Bucky.”

“Listen,” he stops me with one hand still under my arm. “Do me a favor?” When I nod wordlessly he says “I don’t think I can be Bucky any more.”

“What would you like better? James?”

“Mmm, that doesn’t seem quite right either.”

I fish a battered tissue out of my pocket and blow my nose emphatically. “Ok, after we each get a hot shower, we will eat and find you something new to be called. Deal?”

“Deal.”


End file.
